Cape Farewell

case study

Cape Farewell pioneers the cultural response to climate change by working internationally, bringing together artists, scientists and communicators to stimulate the production of art founded in scientific research. Using creativity to innovate, they engage the artists for their ability to evolve and amplify a creative language, communicating on a human scale the urgency of the global climate challenge.

Sunand joined forty other artists as well as the scientists on the seventh Cape Farewell expedition. During the trip they voyaged across the front of the Jakobshavn Glacier, one of Greenland’s largest glaciers moving faster than ever before, losing 20m tons of ice every day. Onboard science crews undertook scientific research, mapping the ocean currents and analysing the Greenlandic seabed.

Sunand undertook an installation called ‘Greenhouse Gas’ on an Arctic beach near the Sermeq Avangnardleq Glacier on ground vacated by a melting glacier. He put up four balloons such that a volume of 540m3 was delineated between their tether lines: the volume of one tonne of CO2; the average emission per person per month in the UK. Within a few years we must make that same amount last 6 months.

This project was reconstructed at the Parade Ground at the Tate Britain by a group of Chelsea College of Art & Design students as part of the Sublime environments and artistic responses to climate change event. Held as part of the Late at Tate series.